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Project Music is the teen volunteer group of Keys 2 Success, where volunteers can expand their worldview and learn to use their own privilege to better their communities. For the next 6 weeks, we will share writings by one of our volunteers to give some insight into their experience.
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When I first heard about Keys 2 Success’ summer camp, I was in a weekly fundraising meeting and was eager to participate. The only problem was that camp started in July, which unfortunately collided with a family vacation set to happen around the same time. However, after speaking with my family, I was able to join an online camp and participate via Zoom.
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During that fateful fundraising meeting, Ms. Krska also described all the different classes that needed volunteer teachers. The stations included Art, Writing, Singing, Piano, and math. While she explained what we had to do for each station, she stated that the math station would be a challenge because not many students like math. Therefore any person would assume that was the last station I would want to volunteer for, but surprisingly you would be wrong.
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The math station, which eventually became STEM, ended up intriguing me the most. I ended up volunteering for STEM, and now that camp has ended, I know I made the right decision. Over three weeks, I was able to work together with two of the most hardworking, amazing people, Chloe and Maddie, as we did our best to make the time at camp as fun as possible.
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During the first week, we had collaboratively created a lesson plan that covered geometric shapes, origami, and paper planes. However, by the end of the week, it became abundantly clear that specific instructions about folding paper and strict lesson plans were not working over Zoom. We ended up spending most of our sessions giving instructions, and there was little to no room for students to be creative with their creations. From that point on, when we discussed what we were going to do for a day of camp, we tried to prioritize what the students wanted and could do in the time that we had, and not only did it become easier to teach, but it became more fun for the students.
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Looking back now, I learned so much by participating in camp and communicating with kids. The most important thing I learned was that what I wanted to do for the day had to be flexible so STEM could be fun. If the students were bored, I had to adjust my plans so that the students got to have fun at camp.
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While it was easy for me to get caught in the idea of teaching the kids different science topics, the fun part of camp is when you spend 20 minutes with a student naming animals, or engage in a 15-minute debate about how to pronounce a name from a trivia question (Out of curiosity, do you think the name Aden is pronounced Ay-den or Ah-den?).
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Summer camp and teaching STEM was one of the BEST parts of my summer. By volunteering, I learned important lessons and met spectacular students that I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to meet otherwise. Overall, I am looking forward to camp next year and all the fun that will come with it!
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Emely Duraes is an aspiring educator and a rising junior at UCTech. She joined Keys 2 Success in 2021 through the Penpal program and is currently one of the main high school writers and volunteers in the Fundraising Committee (if you have received a thank you call from someone recently for a donation, it may very well have been Emely!) Although Emely doesn’t live in Newark she has been connected to Newark her whole life. She believes that music is a powerful tool that connects communities and that every child deserves to have accessible music education in their lives regardless of their race or socioeconomic standing.
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